Gaza and Sudan

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The UN Human Rights Council resolution that the UK drew up and that was passed on Friday includes the urgent need for humanitarian access, as well as the investigation of the atrocities and the ability to hold people to account. The other important issue is that the Quad—the US, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt—has now committed to the humanitarian truce, to a ceasefire and to ending external support to warring parties. It is essential that we all work to implement the commitment that the Quad has set out and ensure that there is huge international pressure to get that peace in place.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber) (SNP)]

This morning, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on international law, justice and accountability, I hosted a briefing for parliamentarians on the crisis in Sudan, at which Nathaniel Raymond of the humanitarian research lab at Yale described El Fasher as a slaughterhouse, where 60,000 people have been murdered in just three weeks. Those same Yale scholars now forecast that by Christmas, the RSF will be in Tawila, where hundreds of thousands of civilians could face a similarly appalling fate. Everybody at the meeting agreed that what has been missing is the Prime Minister’s personal leadership on this issue. Will the Foreign Secretary encourage the Prime Minister to become personally involved and show that vital international leadership which could prevent Tawila becoming another slaughterhouse?

[Yvette Cooper]

I am not only worried about Tawila; I am also deeply worried that the full scale of the atrocities in El Fasher may yet prove to be even worse than has been reported and commented on so far.

On the Prime Minister’s engagement with this issue, I say to the hon. Gentleman that when I was appointed to this role, as well as in the months before that, the Prime Minister personally highlighted the importance of Sudan as one of the central areas that needed UK Government and FCDO focus, because of the scale of the atrocities. That included the work to lead the London Sudan conference in April this year. Before many people were raising concerns about Sudan, this Government were consistently highlighting the humanitarian risks, but the situation is still getting worse and we need international support for action.